


Thinking of You

by totilott



Series: A Groovy Kind of Love [30]
Category: DCU (Comics), Justice League International (Comics)
Genre: M/M, Reflection, The Conglomerate, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings, i really don't know how to tag this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:27:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24803101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/totilott/pseuds/totilott
Summary: A moment to breathe.
Relationships: Michael Carter/Ted Kord
Series: A Groovy Kind of Love [30]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1282328
Comments: 12
Kudos: 45





	Thinking of You

“Okay, so, um -- It’ll be another half hour or so until our plane gets here, so everybody sit tight. Take a breather.”

There's a collective sigh from the team, but Booster doesn't feel the need to placate them further. The day is too nice. Instead he takes another few steps to get off the cracked tarmac and just sits right down on the grass next to the worn, empty runway, legs criss-cross, leaning back. The Brazilian sun warms his skin. The breeze is more noticeable out here where the area has been cleared of lush, thick-trunked trees. It pulls gently at his hair, cools his damp skin. He closes his eyes and exhales.

It's been a good day. A successful day, here at the edges of the Amazon. Claire’s happy, their investors are happy, the media is happy -- and Booster, who found a note tucked into his forcefield belt today as he was boarding the plane to get here (nothing much, nothing obvious, just a note with a scribbled sketch of some kind of insect, perhaps a bee, perhaps a beetle, with a heart next to it), he is happier than all of them combined. That mellow, post-mission feeling is warming him inside like the setting sun is warming his face, and he’s content to sit quiet and tired and happy, barely acknowledging the sounds around him: The screeching of birds far away. The tinny sound of Echo's little radio, playing pop songs in Portuguese. The relaxed chatter among his team members.

“Is it true you’re working on a new album?” 

“I don’t know about that, Cynthia,” Echo replies with good-natured hesitation, like she's self-conscious. “I mean I’m working on some new songs. I always am.”

“You know," Cynthia's voice drops low, confidential. "Sometimes on my way to the kitchen I hear you in your room. I mean, when you're making music. Like, yesterday, I was walking past and you were singing such a wonderful song I had to stop and listen for a little while.” Cynthia bursts out in giggles. “I’m sorry, that’s so creepy of me!”

“No, it’s okay,” Echo chuckles. "Hard not to hear everything, the way those walls are."

“It was -- there was something about a train?”

“A train?” Echo pauses. “Oh, yeah, was it like, uh --” She starts singing low in her distinct, almost hoarse, alto. “ _...Making up songs on the train, playing hopscotch in the rain... Jeremy, oh can’t you see, just one of you makes a better me..._ ”

“That’s the one! That melody, it’s _amazing,”_ Cynthia replies, eagerly and yet softly at the same time. “Jeremy’s your little brother, right?”

“Yeah, he’s about to be six. You know, the first song I ever wrote on my own was a lullaby for him.”

The breeze flutters through Booster’s hair, and he blinks slowly, drawing up his knees to rest his elbows on them, looking across the lush grass fields around them.

Somewhere out there, Ted is working too. Booster wonders if he ever finds time to stop and go outside in the sun and be still like this. On the roof of the Embassy, maybe. Or on a mission somewhere. He wonders if Ted's feeling this same sunlight on his skin. If he stops to think about Booster the way Booster is thinking about him right now.

They've been extra careful these last two weeks, all too aware of the last stragglers among the paparazzi, still hungry to shock the world, finally crack the scandal wide open. The front pages and even the gossip columns have moved on already for lack of developments. The world has moved on, forgotten what was teased and then denied them. Sure, there are still a handful of reporters surreptitiously hanging around the entrance to Booster's apartment building, but every few days another one of them stop showing up. Every few days Booster feels he can breathe a little easier.

In the meantime, Booster and Ted have cut drastically back on sleepovers and seeing each other as often as they used to. A temporary measure of daytime meetings, daytime trysts. And leaving little gifts for each other, to make up for the hours and days they don't see each other. Booster left a little packet of fudge cookies in Ted's toolbox on Tuesday. Friday, Ted snuck a cassette of The Blossoms' greatest hits under the deodorant in Booster's bathroom. Little surprises for when they're apart.

One song on the tinny radio ends, another begins, a soft piano, a pleasant male voice: _"...Cuando digo que no quiero amarte más, es porque te amo..."_

“You know, I’ve been thinking --” There’s a click of a lighter, like a nervous tick. Reverb's voice is low. “Maxi, do you think it’d be really dumb if... If I changed my name?”

“Real name or hero name?”

“Hero name.”

“I don’t know,” Maxi-Man chuckles, his voice powerful and friendly as always. “I’ve only ever known you as ‘Verb. _Reverb,_ I mean.”

Reverb groans softly. “Yeah, but that’s the thing. It wasn’t before I -- I joined a team that I kept hearing my name said aloud, like, on a regular basis, and it makes me think.... ‘Reverb’ is a bit -- A bit unwieldy, maybe? That’s why you guys keep shortening it?”

“I mean, nobody called me just ‘Maxi’ before this outfit either. I still like it as my name, though.” Maxi-Man pauses, breathing in the warm, heady air. “What would you change your name to?”

“I don’t know. I’m thinking something a bit more -- _dynamic._ I don't know. Along the lines of, like, uh, Earthquake. Or Tremor. Or --”

“Quaker?” Maxi-Man posits.

Reverb bursts out laughing; a sharp, surprisingly high-pitched sound. Booster can’t remember ever hearing Reverb laugh like that. _“Mierda,_ I’m a little brown kid from Puerto Rico, Maxi. I can’t call myself Quaker!”

“Well, I don’t know!” Maxi-Man giggles. “I used up all my wits thinking up ‘Maxi-Man’.”

Reverb laughs again, the sound scaring up a small bird, a vividly colored parrot of yellow and green, and it wings past Booster before it disappears again. He wonders idly if Bea went to empty green places like this when she lived here. If she misses this now she lives in New York.

“Hey.”

Booster squints up into the sunlight as Vapor finds a seat on the grass next to him, facing the same emerald-green field.

“Tired?” she asks, pulling a hand through her thick hair.

“No. Not really.” Booster grins. “Just enjoying the sun and the breeze and the quiet.”

“Oh, and here I come bothering you.”

“No, no.” He gestures at her as she begins getting to her feet again, to signal she should stay. “I mean -- Not the talking, it’s still quiet if we talk. I mean the quiet in, um -- The quiet here, where we are.”

_The quiet in my head, for a change. The quiet in my body, in my chest._

She grins at him, shielding her eyes with her hand. “You mean quiet as in no explosions and collapsing buildings, or no PR managers and staged photos?” 

“Yes,” he giggles softly, letting himself fall back against the grass, staring up at an impossibly wide blue sky. 

Claire's been orchestrating excuses for Booster and Vapor to be seen together. Nothing overt, not even holding hands. Just a tendency to stand together in group photos, a few outings together, just the two of them -- to restaurants or in the shopping districts, things like that. Just enough to subtly plant into the minds of the people out there that they're linked, however subtly. There's been conjecture about the two of them from the early days of the team, long before Praxis' stupid interview, so the public at large doesn't seem to be needing much convincing.

An easy measure so far. Convenient. Even if thinking about the details of it makes Booster's chest clench sometimes. He glances over at Vapor. "How are you getting on?"

"What, back there? I think I did pretty good."

"No, I mean --" Booster swallows, not taking his eyes off the blue sky above them. "The... Photos and things. I, um --" Booster inhales, glancing about him to make sure none of the other team members are within listening distance. And he forces himself to say it. "I don't know what Claire's told you."

There's a pause where none of them speak, and Booster wonders if he's an idiot bringing this up when they've both been cheerfully silent on the matter of exactly _why_ Claire insists they should be seen together.

The radio drones on, and he feels a drop of sweat run down his neck. _Stupid, Booster. Always so stupid, poking at things that should be left alone._

"She offered to pay me for it, you know," Vapor replies quietly. "A little extra something to spend time with you. Be seen with you."

Booster closes his eyes. Yeah. _Fuck._

"I didn't take the offer. Just --" She smiles down at her hands. "She gets to pay for the shopping and dinners. The rest I'm doing for free. I thought you should know that."

He frowns at the sky and inhales slowly, deeply. "And, um... You do know why?"

When she speaks it's in a controlled, measured way. "I know after the trouble with Praxis there has been... rumors about you, about all of us in one way or another. And Claire wants..." She frowns in concentration, not looking at him. "She asked me to help distract the media for a while. For the sake of the team. To help you out."

He sits up, facing her. "If it makes you uncomfortable, I understand. I do. We can think of something else. I mean after our little meeting in my apartment, um, that time, I get it if it's, you know, weird for you to --"

"That?" She interrupts him, an amused glint in her eye. "Come on, Booster. That was a bit of flirting between colleagues, that's all." Behind her easy demeanor is a flash of old embarrassment, hidden but obvious enough to Booster.

"I know. Obviously," he smiles. "But I mean it."

She looks at him, her brown eyes meeting his. "Look --" Her lips pull back in an bright smile. "You're fun to flirt with, Gold. Claire insists I get a few free dinners out of it, and that's already more than I was hoping for. But I'd still do it for free." 

Booster crosses his ankles in front of himself, sending a grateful look to Vapor. "You're a real pal, Carrie."

She scans the horizon, whipping a lock of dark hair out of her eyes. "Now, if they want me to have your babies or something, I'm running away screaming."

There's a burst of giggles out Booster. He pulls his gloved hand through his hair. "No babies. Absolutely no babies involved, don't worry." Still, something aches in his chest. He glances sideways at her. "But, um... If you're doing this, with the, the clubbing and the pictures, you --" He inhales quickly. "You should probably know, ah, that those -- those rumors --"

"No, I don't." She returns his gaze with a smirk. "I don't need to know anything. I don't _want_ to know anything." She laughs, a little thinly. "Don't ruin this already, Gold. Not when I'm doing you a favor."

He starts saying something, he starts saying several things, but there are only sounds coming out of his mouth before he reconsiders and stops himself. He swallows, looking down at his hands, before the right words finally come out. "Thank you."

He waits for her to say something, but when she doesn't, he gently drops down on his back again, looking up at the blue, cloudless sky. 

“I’ve been meaning to ask, by the way,” she tells him finally, glancing over at him. “How’s your hand doing?”

He raises his left hand and regards it, the sun gleaming off the golden fabric. “Oh, it’s, um, fine now. The scars aren’t much to look at. But the hand works the way it’s supposed to, anyway. Hasn’t fallen off yet.”

“That’s good,” she smiles. brushing her hair aside. “The lengths you’ll go to to get a new pair of gloves, huh?”

He chuckles, sitting up on his elbows. “No, these, um -- They’re still the same gloves, actually.” When she crinkles her nose in disbelief, he leans forward and points to the palm of his glove; To the small, fine stitches where the dagger tore through it. “See? All stitched up.”

She frowns at his palm, at the golden stitches, before looking up at his face. “You keeping them for sentimental reasons or what?”

“No, no,” he grins. “It’s just I’ve, um --” He snorts and looks up at her, almost apologetic. “I’ve only got this one suit.”

“Are you serious?” She squints at him, grinning. “No spares? Must be hell on your dry cleaning budget.”

He chuckles, pulling his fingers through his hair. “I manage.” The 25th Century microweave doesn’t retain odors at all, really, which Booster knows is the issue most hero wardrobes have to account for.

“I mean, I can hook you up with a tailor, you know. Specializes in spandex,” she tells him earnestly. “She does lots of hero business, I think she did Hawk and Dove’s suits.”

“No, I --”

“She's available every day except Tuesdays and Fridays.” She taps her nose conspiratorially. “I've heard those are the days she sews for the baddies.”

“I can’t just get another suit, Carrie,” he smiles, adjusting his goggles. “This isn’t spandex, you know, it’s -- Uh --” He falters, suddenly aware how obvious it’ll be that he doesn’t know his own equipment. “The fabric’s special,” he continues, trying to sound confident. “Very, um, intricate future-tech, with its own kind of power transferal, and -- and it --” He gives up, indicating his wrist blasters. “It makes my stuff work.”

“So these years you’ve been active you’ve just...” Vapor makes a questioning gesture. “Patched it up, over and over again?”

He shrugs.

“That won’t leave you much to work with after a while,” she ponders with a grin. “Can’t wait to see you saving the day in your super-thong.”

He pulls up his knees and laughs, and it feels good to laugh here, with these people. With his team. He hasn’t done that so much before. “No, it --” He wipes his face, giggling. “It’s very forgiving, this fabric. It stretches, like _a lot._ Actually it -- With enough tension it starts generating more -- more material all on its own, for the area where it's being pulled. Up to a certain point, anyway." When Ted first started testing the limits of Booster's suit, he had scavenged embroidery hoops to keep the tension up for days at a time. "I guess it -- it’s like it _wants_ to mend with a little help, with a few stitches.”

She closes her eyes, facing the sun. “So you’re a hero, a supermodel, and a seamstress.”

“Not me,” he smiles, pulling off his gloves, wanting to feel the soft grass under his hands. As usual he can't help noticing the slightly irregular salmon pink scar at the back of his hand, feel the slight tightness of healing tissue. “I couldn’t sew a straight line if you held a gun to my head. I just, um, I know someone. He’s great at sewing, and, um, weird tech and patching things up.” 

His glove lies limp in his palm, and idly he trails a thumb over the subtle ridge of the stitches. They’re neater and smaller than the crooked line of stitches covering a tear at the back of his hip, Ted’s first attempt at mending it years ago. Even neater than the almost invisible line of stitches from the collar down to the shoulder, where the medics cut his suit off him when he had that dislocation. Every year, Ted getting more skilled at patching him back together, making his past failures invisible unless you know exactly what you're looking for.

Just a minor patch job this time, of course. Two neat tears on either side of his glove. Booster still smiles at the thought of Ted’s excitement, his triumph, at finding thread that was a closer match to the color this time. Still loves the mental image of Ted with his workbench magnifier stand, the one he uses for all his fiddly technical work, lovingly sewing Booster’s glove. Every neat little stitch a secret love letter that Booster gets to carry with him everywhere, across the globe. Thread against his skin, thread where every inch was once against Ted’s skin, too, between his neat, precise fingers.

Vapor drops down on her back in the grass, eyes closed, and sighs contentedly warmed by the sun. “Not looking for a new tailor, then.”

"Nah." Booster exhales, not taking his eyes off the palm of his glove. “I’m happy with the one I have.”

**Author's Note:**

> See, I messed up my schedule. This was supposed to be a sweet little installment meant to be read straight away after the Praxis conflict, and then real life happened to me very fast and I didn't write for a few months, and here I come with my little morsel of a chapter. Hey guys, I know we've all worked through our feelings about that arc but pretend you're still going through it please? Needing a little bit of a wind-down after the bad stuff? Imagine this came out, like, a week after the last chapter and we're good.
> 
> So anyway-- sorry for disappearing; The next chapter is already drafted; We're back on track. Thank you for your patience and the unexpected love I continue to receive for this self-indulgent little series!
> 
>  **[Songs:](https://open.spotify.com/user/tilly_stratford/playlist/4SqomvmhyncWPEAobYUZ88?si=DNXWufsLSs29KqRywW2U9A)**  
>  Evidências - Chitãzinho & Xororó  
> Thinking of you - Sister Sledge


End file.
